The Pokémon Go Community Day is a regular event in Niantic's augmented reality game - a monthly event encouraging players to play together worldwide.

Each event will see featured Pokémon appear for a limited time - offering an exclusive move - and a resource bonus for the duration.

What is Pokémon Go's Community Day event?

Designed to get players out and playing at a certain time, each limited-time event will offer featured Pokémon with a unique and exclusive move that will spawn for three hours, alongside a resource bonus - such as double XP, Stardust or Lure Modules - as incentives to get out there and playing.

Developer Niantic hopes the regular event will add to the "excitement of local events and meetups", suggesting it's a good time to get your friends together at this set time, and possibly make a few new ones while out there.

The heightened player activity might make it easier to take on Raids and Gyms, so keep that in mind during the three hour period, as well as making savvy use of the resource multiplier in effect with things like Lucky Eggs and Stardust, too.

Pokémon Go Community Day date, times, featured Pokémon Bulbasaur explained

Resource Bonus: Triple XP (from catching Pokémon only - not from all sources)

How useful is Bulbasaur?

As with other first generation starters, Bulbasaur has remained a somewhat uncommon find in the game, being able to be discovered across fields and parks.

Though Bulbasaur candy can be easily obtained from Ivysaur raid encounters, finding a fleet of Bulbasaur will be valuable to simply evolve to get Pokédex entries Ivysaur and Venusaur if you don't already have it.

Venusaur, meanwhile, is a strong grass-type creature, and though grass isn't particularly popular in the game's meta, it certain has its uses when it comes to toppling Gyms and in Raids.

If you evolve Bulbasaur's second evolution into its third - Venusaur - during the hours of the event, it'll then learn the exclusive move Frenzy Plant.

To clarify, you can only learn this move during the three hours of the event - and must be through evolution, and not using a TM.

Will there be a shiny Bulbasaur?

Though Niantic has yet to confirm specifics, based on previous Community Day events, it's highly likely shiny Bulbasaur will debut as part of the event, and between a higher quantities of Bulbasaurs appearing and the likelihood of an increased shiny spawn rate, it shouldn't be too difficult to find.

How to prepare for Community Day

It's probably worth picking up some Lucky Eggs from the in-game store when you can, as it'll provide a huge multiplier when combined with the bonus 3x XP catch bonus earned during the event.

If you plan to chain Bulbasaur catches, you may also want to consider staying near a clustered group of PokéStops with Lures enabled (which increases the creatures that spawn round them for all players), as well as using Incense (increase the spawn rate of creatures around you alone).

It may also be worth stockpiling Pinap Berries, too, which will increase your Candy gains, if there are a few Bulbasaurs you want to evolve into Venusaur and power up completely. Again, they're not one of the game's best creatures, but it's a capable grass type to have in your box.

North America, South America and Greenland: 11am to 2pm PST, 2pm to 5pm EST

Asia Pacific: 12pm to 3pm JST

Featured Pokémon and unique move: Pikachu with Surf

Resource Bonus: Double XP

Pikachu with Surf is a series mainstay, first appearing in Gen 1 mainline game Pokémon Yellow and countless giveaways and cameos since.

Why? Pikachu remains enormously popular and the novelty of giving an electric Pokémon a water move has yet to feel old. Though this form of Pikachu won't come close to troubling the meta of Pokémon Go, it's a nice nod to longtime series fans and yet another themed Pikachu to add to your Go collection.

Meanwhile, double XP will benefit just about every activity in the game, but is particularly useful if you have a Lucky Egg or three spare and a handful of Pokémon ready to evolve, giving you a healthy top up of experience to help get that little bit further to the next level.

North America, South America and Greenland: 11am to 2pm PST, 2pm to 5pm EST

Asia Pacific: 12pm to 3pm JST

Featured Pokémon and unique move: Dratini, while evolution Dragonair will learn Draco Meteor when evolving into Dragonite during event hours

Resource Bonus: Triple Stardust (from catching Pokémon only - not from all sources)

How useful is Dratini?

Rare for players who don't live near lakes and oceans, Dratini is likely to be a popular choice for the second Pokémon Go Community Day, allowing you to farm the three-stage evolution Pokémon in abundance, especially since evolution Dragonite is one of the best Pokémon in the game.

Draco Meteor explained

Though Dratini won't have a unique move on its own, any you evolve from its second to third stage evolutions (from Dragonair into Dragonite) will learn the newly added Draco Meteor.

You can only learn this move during the three hours of the event - and must be through evolution, and not using a TM.

Though Draco Meteor won't be Dragonite's best Charge Move (for now, anyway - a balance change could make it more useful one day) we'd recommend getting it if you can. You can always change it to something else with a TM later, after all.

(Interestingly, Niantic didn't announce what this special move was when the event was announced. If you're curious, our best guess was that Dratini will learn Extremespeed, a unique move that only one, special gift Dratini has ever known in the main Pokémon games.

It's only been possible to acquire in Pokémon Crystal and the later remakes Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. It's a highly useful one in mainline games, having second-tier move priority (meaning it always goes first, regardless of Speed stat, even if another Pokémon uses a priority move like Quick Attack) so it'll be interesting to see how it's implemented in Pokémon Go if we're right.)